Monday, November 5, 2012

A dish born of not having a crucial ingredient

We have a Kamias tree in our garden. It bears fruit throughout the year. The Kamias tree is called cucumber or sorrel tree in English. Its fruit is
used both for cooking and traditional medicine. Kamias fruit is very sour so it is often used to make chutney or sauces for meat or fish dishes. I love the dish my mum cooks with it. She stir fries thinly sliced kamias fruit with sliced pork and fermented soy bean paste all balanced out with garlic and sugar. I usually end up eating an extra serving when she makes it. It is so aromatic that one can be forgiven for failing to resist. The dish I am sharing with you today is a bit of a happy accident born of not having "buah cermai" (Malay gooseberry) at hand. For this chef inspired dish it is a critical ingredient. These greenish, yellowish little fruits grow in clusters. Like kamias fruit, they taste rather sour too.The following recipe is inspired by Chef Malcom Goh's Crispy Skin Salmon with buah cermai. As I did not have buah cermai in stock, I made my version of Crispy Salmon with kamias fruit instead. I am very happy with how it turned out because
it is a pretty dish and had a slight umami taste experience. My Quay Lo is not a big fan of
the aqua-culture salmon we get here. As a sport fisherman in the U.S. he always caught wild salmon which he prefers. On the other hand, I am not a big fan of cooked salmon, preferring the sashimi style of serving it. However, we both agree we are happy
to have a way to prepare the salmon that we both like.

Crispy Skin Salmon with kamias compote

Inspired by Chef Malcom Goh - Back to the Streets on AFC

This dish was featured in Asian Food Channel (Official) Facebook Page

on 8th November 2012

Ingredients:

2 x 100gms salmon fillet

Method:

Season the salmon
with salt and pepper. Pan fry in a pan with some corn oil skin side first on
low heat. Once the fish is cooked three quarters though, using the change of
colour on the flesh as your indication, turn over the fish and allow to cook on
the other side for 10 more seconds. Remove the salmon and allow to rest.

kamias
compote ingredients:

50gms kamias,
diced

1 nos tomato,
remove seeds and diced

2 nos sliced
shallots

¼ cup
fennel, diced

1 chilli
padi, finely diced

2 tbsp sugar

100ml water

40 gms
butter

½ tsp salt

1 stalk
serai (lemon grass) pounded

½ tsp roux

1 tsp
toasted sesame seeds

bean sprouts
shoots for garnishing

Method:

Boil water
and sugar till sugar is completely dissolved. Add in tomato, shallots, kamias,
lemon grass and chilli padi and let it simmer till kamias is soften. Add in
butter and salt and mix well and let it simmer for another 5 minutes on low
heat. Add in diced fennel and simmer till fennel is translucent. Add ½ tsp roux to thicken the sauce. Lastly add in the toasted sesame and place it on the
serving plate. Put the piece of salmon on top of the sauce and garnish with
bean sprouts shoots. Serve with freshly baked baguette and a green of your choice.

The wild salmon tasted leaner overall, with a ‘buttery, pleasant texture’ and a sweet, fresh flavor. The cultured salmon, which get less exercise and consume more fat than wild salmon, tasted ‘fishy,’ with ‘slimy, soft’ flesh and a ‘musty, fatty’ aftertaste.”

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MEET QUAY PO

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.

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I wish to thank those who have given me AWARDS. I feel really honored and thankful to you all. I have decided not to display the awards in my blog or pass it on because I feel it is impossible for me to pass it on to all the deserving blogs. They are so many and I do not feel comfortable leaving anyone out. I hope you appreciate how I feel. Once again Thanks a Million for thinking of me.